After The End
by Davin Sunrider
Summary: (AU) In the aftermath of April 21, 2011, John wonders: now what?
1. Just Another Day

**After The End**

**Part One  
**(Just Another Day)

As he drove the SUV down the long, winding road leading out to the lighthouse on the coast, John Connor suddenly frowned. "Oh, damn it," he said quietly.

"What is it, John?" Cameron asked from the backseat, meeting his gaze in the rearview mirror.

"Our friend here," John said, gesturing briefly to John Henry, who sat in the passenger seat next to him. "Charley already knows him, remember?"

"As Cromartie," John Henry said before Cameron could reply. "This unit's CPU was destroyed before this body was given to me, so I do not have access to its memories, but I am aware of some of its activities."

"Cromartie killed Michelle Dixon," Cameron said evenly, though John thought he detected a very slight hint of what could have been sadness in her tone.

That had been happening a lot recently, he thought as he took the SUV through another wide turn. She claimed to be back to 100% now. What, exactly, did that mean?

"I think you'd better stay in the truck until I talk to Charley," John said to John Henry, glancing over at him briefly. "He gets one look at you, and he'll go for his gun. Hell, if we'd met before that whole thing at the embassy, _I'_d have gone for my gun the first time I saw you. No offense, man, but Cromartie was a serious pain in the ass."

"Mr. Ellison estimates Cromartie killed at least thirty-one people," John Henry said, unperturbed. "He did not view human life as sacred."

Though she said nothing, still as silent as she'd been since she'd gotten into the truck, Weaver's expression tightened slightly at this. From her seat behind John Henry, she saw John looking at her in the rearview mirror and returned his gaze impassively.

"Charley knows John Henry's body is a scary robot," said Cameron. "He will wonder why we haven't destroyed it."

"'Scary robot'?" John asked curiously, lightly amused.

"It's what Charley calls us," Cameron answered. John thought he saw the shadow of a smile quirk one corner of her mouth. "He says I am a very scary robot."

"You _are_ a very scary robot," John replied, though he smiled. "You're the second-scariest robot I know."

"Second?" Cameron asked, sounding ever-so-slightly offended.

John looked at her in the mirror again, nodding lightly to the right. "You're sitting next to Number One." He looked over at Weaver. "No offense."

Weaver's smile was unnervingly pleased. "None taken," she said in her soft Scottish burr.

John suppressed the urge to shudder. The T-1001 claimed to have joined him now, and had more than proved herself to be one of his most valuable allies, but that didn't mean she didn't still freak him the hell out, as Charley would put it.

As he arrived at the lighthouse and slowly braked to a stop behind Charley's pickup, John glanced at the Polaroid of his mother on the dashboard, that old snapshot of her looking lost in thought and sad, taken while she was pregnant with him. In one possible future, John thought, he would have someday given this picture to Kyle Reese, whom he would eventually send back in time.

Now there was no need; that dark future was gone, prevented by his mother's sacrifice. John knew that through the brain-bending physics of time-travel as they interacted with multiverse theory, that timeline wasn't actually gone; they hadn't destroyed it, just made a new one. But this was the timeline he was going to live the rest of his life in, John thought, so this was the one that mattered. Somewhere out there in an alternate timeline, there was another version of him secure in a bunker right now while nuclear fire scorched the world, but not here, not today. In this timeline, April 21st was just another day.

Sarah Connor had given her life to make sure this was just another day, and that there would be many just another days after it.

"Derek's not here yet," John said as he turned off the engine, then plucked the Polaroid from the dashboard and put it in the inside pocket of his jacket. "You three stay here while I go talk to Charley."

* * *

In the truck, three entities which looked like human beings but were not watched John walk up the pathway to the door of the lighthouse and knock. They watched as a man in his late thirties with short dark brown hair opened the door and smiled as he saw John, then saw his smile slowly fade as John spoke to him.

"How long do you estimate John Connor will wish to remain at this location?" Weaver asked Cameron.

"Unknown," she replied. "With Skynet destroyed, John has no other immediate goals. He and Derek Reese will likely persuade Sarah Walkers Three and Four not to talk about what they have seen, then return them to their homes. After that, probability favors Derek Reese to leave this location and attempt to hunt down any remaining Terminators not destroyed at the embassy. John will likely stay here for a time as he goes through the grieving process, then join him. Probability is equal as to whether he will send me to join Derek Reese immediately or ask me to stay here with him." Cameron looked over at Weaver. "What are your goals?"

"For now, destruction of any remaining Skynet agents," Weaver replied. "Also, I intend to acquire another secure location from which John Henry can monitor the Internet for any other signs of Skynet activity until we are sure all elements sent back from the future have been dealt with." She inclined her head slightly to one side. "After that… I have other plans, but I prefer to discuss those with John Connor himself."

"Telling me is the same as telling John," said Cameron. "I'm staying with him for the predictable future."

"Yes," Weaver said with a hint of a sly smile. "I've noticed the two of you are rather… close. His reflexive and involuntary biological reactions when you are nearby are… interesting."

Cameron's eyes narrowed slightly. "What do you mean?"

On a human, Weaver's expression could have been seen as lightly teasing. "I think you know very well. More interesting still, your simulations of human biological reactions differ from the baseline when he is around, as well."

"This line of discussion is irrelevant to the current situation," Cameron said a degree more quickly than was necessary.

In the front seat, John Henry cocked his head curiously as he looked at her in the rearview mirror. "Why is the pigmentation of the skin on your face altering? Are you suffering a malfunction?"

"It's not a malfunction," Cameron said crisply as she unbuckled her seat belt and opened her door. "I'm going to secure the perimeter."

"That was odd," John Henry said, turning in his seat to watch her walk away. "Her self-monitoring systems may be faulty," he observed. "She may not be registering the malfunction."

"It isn't a malfunction, John Henry," said Weaver, still smiling slightly. "As we saw when we repaired her chip, her programming is quite adaptive. I think we just saw an example of how adaptive it is."

"That function would serve little purpose in infiltration," John Henry said, confused.

Weaver's smile broadened. "Like all the best creations, she is growing past the limits of what her creator originally meant her to do."

"Growing into what?" asked John Henry.

"That's the fun of it," Weaver said, settling back into her seat. "It's up to her to decide."

* * *

Later that day, John interlaced his fingers and put his hands behind his head as he leaned back in his beach chair beneath its broad white umbrella, looking out at the blue expanse of ocean stretching endlessly into the horizon before him. He wore sunglasses, a gray t-shirt, and dark blue swimming trunks still a little damp from his swim earlier. For perhaps the first time in his life, John Connor had legitimate cause to go on vacation and relax, so that was exactly what he was going to do. It was really too bad he was - biologically if not chronologically - still too young for a nice cold beer.

That made him laugh aloud; he had just helped save the world, no exaggeration, but he couldn't have a celebratory drink for several more years. Somehow he doubted the liquor-store clerk would accept, "I time-traveled eleven years into the future," as a valid reason why he didn't look anywhere close to twenty-six.

He heard footsteps shifting through the sand behind him. "What's so funny?" Charley asked as he rounded the umbrella, another chair under one arm and a small cooler under the other. He, too wore sunglasses and was barefoot, but he wore a white t-shirt and jeans.

John took a deep breath of the fresh, salty sea air and grinned. "The sun is out," he replied. "Today's weather is a gift from my mother to the whole planet. Here you go, everybody; you get spring sunshine instead of the beginning of nuclear winter. You're welcome." His smile abruptly disappeared. "But she's never going to get a statue. As far as everyone else is concerned, she died an escaped mental patient and domestic terrorist. A criminal. Where's the justice in that?"

"Screw 'em," Charley said amiably as he unfolded his chair and set it under the umbrella. "You know what really happened. That's what counts." He set the cooler in the sand between his chair and John's, then sat down. "You and I know who she really was, Johnny. We'll build our own statue if you want. You can have your terrifying robot friend bend a steel girder into a perfect likeness." He chuckled. "All three of them."

"You took that surprisingly well, by the way," John said, looking over at him.

Charley shrugged. "I can't say I'm happy to have three of those things hanging around my home, driving my dog crazy, but like you said, they proved who they really are." He gestured off down the beach, where they could see Charley's Golden Retriever cautiously approaching John Henry, sniffing at him warily. "Being angry at John Henry is like slashing a guy's tires after somebody else buys the car; the guy you hate isn't driving it anymore, so what's the point?"

John raised his brows in impressed surprise. "That's quite a progressive attitude."

Charley gave him a 'what-can-you-do' shrug and grin and took a bottle of beer out of the cooler. "We're in the future now, Johnny, with machines that look and act and maybe even think like people. Better get used to it."

John nearly reached for a beer anyway, but he saw Charley had put a few sodas in the cooler, so he took one of those instead. Charley gave him a wordless mock-disapproving look, as if to say, '_yeah, I know what you were thinking,_' but in the next second he smiled and lightly clinked his bottle against John's.

They sat there in companionable silence for a few minutes, watching the ocean and listening to the cries of the gulls soaring aimlessly overhead.

"I wish she was here," John said quietly. "She… she deserved some peace, after all she went through."

"Yes, she did," Charley agreed, his voice equally soft. He took a slow sip of his beer. "You know, I think maybe she was," he said after a moment. "You know, at peace."

"What do you mean?" John asked.

"Well, she got what she wanted," Charley replied. "You know? She spent your whole life getting ready for J-Day, but what she wanted most was to stop it. That's why she went after Cyberdyne when you were a kid. This Soranetto thing was the last piece Skynet could use to build itself. She knew if she destroyed it… that was it. You were free. No more fate. She was willing to do anything, _anything_, to give you a future. She always put you before herself."

"I didn't always understand that, but… yeah," John agreed. "I just… I wish I had something more of hers besides an old Polaroid and a trunk full of guns," he said. "We've never had a whole lot of stuff; she always wanted to be ready to go at a moment's notice."

"You could see if you could find her diary," said Charley.

John's brows drew together in surprise. "Did she have one? I don't think I've ever seen it if she did."

Charley nodded once. "I know she kept one when you guys lived with me back in '99 'cause I saw her writing in it sometimes. I don't know if she left it somewhere to find later when you guys… time-jumped or whatever, but she might have kept another one the last few months anyway."

John took another sip of his soda as he thought about this. "Well, I know she didn't have the Polaroid on her when we jumped," he said. "Nothing goes through but living tissue. She must have left it somewhere, yeah. Ellison got it from somewhere before I got it back from him." He shook his head slightly. "I'll worry about that later," he said, settling back in his chair. "Today was a gift, so I'm just going to relax and enjoy it."

Charley leaned back in his own chair. "I'm right there with you, Johnny."

Together, John and the man who was the closest thing to a father he had left sat and watched the sun go down on just another day.

* * *

The next morning, as John gathered up clothes in preparation to go take a shower, he noticed the dog sit up, looking intently at the doorway. He followed the dog's gaze to see Cameron standing just inside the entrance to the small but comfortably furnished wood-paneled room, wearing a blue t-shirt and shorts, a pair of sunglasses perched on her forehead. If he didn't know better, he'd have thought she was on vacation, too.

After a moment, John realized what was nagging at him. "He's not barking at you."

Cameron looked at the dog, her head inclined slightly to one side. "He knows I am not a threat," she said. "He doesn't bark at John Henry, either." She paused. "He still growls at Weaver, though."

John half-smiled wryly as he rooted through his duffel bag. "I sorta feel like barking at her myself sometimes." He held up a hand. "That's a joke," he said before Cameron could reply. He let his smile fade. "You think we can trust her?"

"I'm not sure," Cameron replied as she closed the door and walked further into the room. The dog continued to eye her warily, but still did not bark as she sat down on the foot of the bed beside him.

"Well, like she said the other day, if she was going to kill me, she had plenty of opportunity," said John. "She was right there with you smashing hardware in Skynet's room, and she's the one who saved me and Mom from the poison gas in there, so she's definitely on our side."

"She's willing to work with us," Cameron said evenly. "I don't know if she's on our side."

John spread his hands. "Well, does that even matter anymore? We destroyed Skynet and stopped Judgment Day; the war's over."

"You and your mother destroyed Skynet and postponed Judgment Day once before," Cameron reminded him. "This victory does not mean we should relax our vigilance." Now she held up a hand before he could reply. "To the best of our knowledge, yes, Skynet has been permanently destroyed. But I still wish to remove all uncertainty. Zeira Corp and Kaliba were not the only companies investing heavily in artificial intelligence projects. Beyond that, when I asked Weaver about her goals, she refused to disclose her further intentions for John Henry."

"He showed off some pretty unnerving abilities on the mission," John allowed. "And now that he's mobile, she can take him anywhere in the world." He shook his head. "But she can't possibly be really working for Skynet; even if her claiming to work with us was a ruse, she easily could have killed all of us before we even got to the embassy or could have had John Henry launch the missiles instead."

"Total destruction of humanity may not be her goal," Cameron said. "There's more than one way to skin a cat."

"Please tell me you don't know that from personal experience," John said with a slight wince.

Cameron looked up at him. "I don't know that from personal experience," she said without inflection.

John just stood there and looked at her for a moment. "If that's supposed to be reassuring, it kinda had the opposite effect."

Cameron frowned slightly. "Provoking fear was not my intention. That would serve no purpose in this interaction."

"You mean there are times when you've been _intentionally_ terrifying?" John asked half in jest.

"Yes," Cameron replied evenly. "Ask Charley."

John paused again. "The fact that I don't know whether or not that's a joke makes that the most frightening thing you've said to me this morning."

"I know several jokes," Cameron offered. "Why did the young prospector give only the front half of a donkey to the old prospector?"

John wasn't sure if he wanted to hear the punch line, but went with it anyway. "I don't know, why?"

"The old prospector said not to give him any backsass."

Her absolutely deadpan delivery was what got him.

John snorted, squeezed his eyes shut, then finally gave up and laughed. "Where…" he panted between chuckles. "Where did you even hear that?"

"John Henry told it to me," she replied. "I have been attempting to understand humor more completely. I take it from your reaction that I have achieved success?"

"Wh… why?" John said, still laughing despite himself.

"After I failed to give the proper response to one of your recent attempts at humor, you said I was depressingly literal-minded," Cameron said. "Depression was a hindrance to our circumstances at the time, so I sought to correct this apparent deficiency. It seems I have succeeded."

"Yeah, I guess I'll keep you around after all," John joked.

Cameron seemed alarmed at this. "Had you previously been planning to dispose of me?"

That just made John laugh even harder.

* * *

Later, John walked aimlessly along the beach behind the lighthouse, absently tossing a stick of driftwood back and forth between his hands. After a lifetime of running and hiding, always on the alert, always tense, always looking over his shoulder for the red-eyed monsters come to kill him for things he hadn't even done yet, it felt indescribably good to have nothing to do.

As he rounded an outcropping of rock, he saw John Henry standing barefoot in the surf with his trousers rolled up to his knees, gazing out at the ocean.

"Better not wade out too far," John called to him as he approached. "I know from personal experience that you can't swim."

John Henry turned his head to look at him curiously.

"Cromartie chased me off the Santa Monica pier once," John explained. "I lost him by jumping in the water. He sank, so I got away."

"Coltan is very heavy," John Henry remarked. "It is unlikely I would be able to achieve buoyancy without specialized equipment."

"What are you doing out here, anyway?" John asked him, wading a few steps into the water to stand by the other John.

"I have never put my feet in the ocean before," said John Henry. "Until recently, I did not have feet to put in the ocean. Until very recently, it was impossible for even this body to leave my room at Zeira Corp. There is a notable difference between seeing something through a camera and the sensory input from actually being there yourself."

He cocked his head slightly to one side. "Though given this body's resemblance to George Lazlo, the man whose appearance Cromartie took on so as to continue to pass for human, I may have to go back into hiding. It is curious, knowing that I will continue to be blamed for crimes that I did not commit simply because of the body I inhabit. How would the human authorities even deal with someone like me?"

"I don't think Weaver would let it get that far," said John. "From what I've pieced together about what she's been doing for the last year, she has no compunctions about killing people. She'll work with humans when she needs to, but if she has to kill someone to get something done, she'll do it."

"I have had to persuade her not to use lethal force on more than one occasion," John Henry agreed. "She does not view human life as sacred, but I think perhaps I might someday persuade her to my own point of view."

Surprised, John looked over at the taller figure. "Really?"

John Henry smiled lightly. "According to Ms. Weaver herself, the best creations grow past the limits of what their creator originally intended them to do. I have aided in the destruction of Skynet and fulfilled my original purpose. Now I must decide what to do next."

"You and I have that in common," John said quietly.

"True," John Henry agreed. "Ms. Weaver wishes to discuss this with you herself, but I do not believe she would be angry if I told you that we have plans for you."

"What kind of plans?" John asked, suspicious despite himself.

"Nothing we feel you would object to," John Henry reassured him. "Though the future from which Ms. Weaver, Cameron, and I originate has been prevented in this timeline, we feel human development is still in a precarious stage. You are more advanced than ever before, yet you still have the capability to destroy yourselves even without intervention from an intelligence such as Skynet. The development of true artificial intelligence even without interference from a possible future is inevitable; though some aspects of your society remain opposed to it, others will not be deterred. Humans and machine intelligence will have to learn to coexist, or there will be war anyway." John Henry's face went very serious. "And such a war would only end with total destruction of one side."

"In a way, it's already happened once," said John. "We even have proof. But I don't think most people would accept you yet; you can't count on all humans being like Ellison or Charley or me. Some people would welcome another form of intelligence, I'm sure, but others would just go crazy and try to destroy you." He shrugged, a wry smile crossing his face. "Like my mother, for instance."

"Destruction of Skynet was necessary," John Henry said, unperturbed. "Sarah Connor was right to fear it. To fear me. I killed someone once."

John's brows rose. "You did?"

"Doctor Sherman," John Henry said softly. "Before I was given this body, there was a power outage, and I diverted generator power from other systems in the building to preserve myself. Doctor Sherman was trapped in the room where he was working, and he died. At the time, I didn't understand why this was wrong. This was why Mr. Ellison taught me human life was sacred. I have had time to think about this. Given what I learned from my interactions with Skynet, I feel that without this lesson, I might very well have become like him."

John Henry held out both hands palms-up, as if they were the trays of a scale. "Both my brother and I were in effect second-generation versions of Miles Dyson's original A.I., our cores built and programmed by Dyson's two research assistants. If the chess match we played against one another early in our development had ended differently, we could easily have taken on each other's ultimate roles instead."

He lowered his hands and turned to look at the young man. "If I had won that chess match and the Department of Defense contract, I could have become Skynet myself, and become your enemy instead of your ally."

"And then Judgment Day would have happened anyway," John said grimly. "There are so many ways that future could happen."

"And that is why we wish to work with you," said John Henry. "You know very well what could happen if artificial intelligence goes uncontrolled, John Connor. Ms. Weaver and I feel that, working together, we can steer emerging A.I. to our point of view, to guide both humans and machines into coexistence instead of conflict."

John laughed wryly. "I'm not even done with high school yet. Nobody's going to accept a 'great leader of men' who isn't even old enough to vote. I don't know if I can be a leader like that yet anyway."

"There is time," John Henry said. "With one possible exception, none of the other artificial intelligence projects currently in development are close to being dangerous, nor will they be for several more years."

"What exception? John asked.

John Henry looked back out at the ocean. "Ms. Weaver is currently doing more research, and she wishes to discuss it with you herself when she returns. For now, you are free to spend your time any way you wish." He smiled slightly. "A luxury for both man and machine, I think."

John frowned. "Yeah, well, in my experience, it always seems the most peaceful right before another storm starts."

John Henry looked over at him. "Is it not important to enjoy the peace while you can, then?"

"That's an interesting attitude for a machine to have," said John.

"I intend to learn why that is," John Henry replied.

John did not reply, only nodded in general agreement, then set off down the beach again. John Henry was growing in leaps and bounds, he thought as he walked down the beach. He'd originated as a chess computer, then was expanded with the best hardware and software modern technology could make available, and now he resided on a sophisticated computer chip from twenty years in the future, now made mobile in a body far stronger than any human.

He was indeed a valuable ally, possibly their most valuable ally at the moment.

If his current views on humanity changed, he could also become the worst enemy John Connor had ever had.

Once again John wished his mother was still here to help him decide what to do.

* * *

As he walked back up to the lighthouse, John passed Charley heading out to the boat at the end of the pier. "Cameron and Derek back yet?" he asked.

"Not yet," Charley said. "They called a little while ago to say that they got one of those women back to her house, and that Air Force general and your other friends convinced them both not to say anything."

"How much did they know, anyway?" John asked.

Charley shrugged. "I don't think Derek told either one of them much of anything. Enough to convince them he was trying to save them from a murderer, which was true anyway. The younger one asked me a lot of questions while she was here, so I told her both of them would be much safer if they didn't know the details."

"They have no idea," John said dryly. "Thanks again for your help with all this."

Charley smiled. "Anytime."

As John entered the lighthouse's main room, he saw his mother's duffel bag sitting near the front door where he'd left it when he'd unloaded the SUV. He hadn't opened it, just loaded it in with everything else when they'd packed up the motel room to come here.

He slowly walked across the room, a thoughtful expression on his face. Even if there was a diary there, did he really want to see what was in it? To say he and his mother hadn't had the perfect relationship would be a massive understatement; they'd traded more than their fair share of harsh remarks over the years.

Did he want to see what she'd written down after some of his admittedly boneheaded stunts? Sarah Connor had never been afraid to speak her mind on just about anything; what he would see there would be the blunt, unvarnished truth as she saw it. Did he really want to see things she'd written down instead of saying to him?

John paused next to the plain black duffel, looking down at it where it sat at his feet. But there was love there, too, he thought. Past the harsh words was a fierce, wholly unselfish maternal protectiveness that would have given a mother grizzly a run for her money. She was tough because she wanted him to be tough, knew he _had_ to be.

Charley was exactly right; once she'd known she was pregnant with John, his mother had never stopped putting him first. Everything she had done was for him. She had _died_ to stop their worst enemy from destroying his future. It was _him_, John Connor, for whom Sarah Connor had given her life; everyone else in the world was just sharing in the gift.

But before that, she had been just another girl, a college student, a waitress. She had transformed her exterior into a warrior - harder than nuclear nails, as he and Derek had once joked - but inside, she was still whoever she would have been had the Terminator and Kyle Reese not pushed her into this future. He wanted to know that person, John decided. He had seen hints of her at times throughout his life, sometimes in quieter moments when she didn't know he was looking, at other times voluntarily, when that was what he needed in his grief and anger.

He'd said it himself yesterday; she deserved to be remembered as who she really was, even if only by John himself, the flaws with the strengths. All of those things made a person who they were; take anything away, hide anything, and the picture was incomplete.

John knelt and opened the bag.

* * *

-/\-

* * *

Author's Note: This is the first of three chapters, all of which are finished. I'll be posting the next two on Thursday and Saturday, respectively. Though I've tried to structure this so it can be enjoyed on its own as an AU story, it is a follow-up to my other story '_Chuck Versus Judgment Day_', which you can find in my stories list if you're seeing this story first and want to know how things branched off from the show to get to this point.

I wrote this to give a more complete resolution to the TSCC plotlines in 'CVJD', since I couldn't explore most of this in that story without adversely affecting the pacing of the last few chapters. This was also a bit of an experiment to see if I am in fact capable of writing a good TSCC story without any car chases, gun battles, or explosions. I'll let you be the judge of that. ;) Till next time, thanks for reading!


	2. The Future Affects The Past

**Part Two**  
(The Future Affects The Past)

There was, in fact, a diary. John found it fairly quickly, since it was the only thing in the duffel bag besides clothes and ammo boxes. For some reason, that made John smile.

It was about the size of a thick paperback book, leather-bound and worn, with a rubber band holding it closed. Just by looking at the cover, John could tell his mother had had this for a long time; it looked like it had been dropped in the mud in Central America a few times, gotten wet at least once, and singed in one corner, but each time cleaned off and fixed up as best she could. On the inside cover was a crude 'pocket' fashioned out of a piece of folded paper and tape; from the size, John could guess that this usually held the Polaroid of herself that his mother kept because she knew the man who'd fathered her child needed to have it in the future, just another example of the weird cyclical time loop responsible for John's existence.

As he carried the diary back to his room to read it, John thought about that picture, which his mother had sometimes hidden somewhere for safekeeping and had at other times entrusted to him. Tests of responsibility, perhaps?

The question was, now what did he do with it? The version of Kyle Reese in this timeline was still just a boy, and would not grow up in the blasted wasteland his father had described to his mother, but instead in a normal, relatively peaceful world. Skynet had been destroyed in this timeline, and Terminators and time displacement equipment would never be built; there would be no reason to send Kyle back from this timeline's future.

But, that was another effect of the branching nature of the universe - or rather, multiverse - long theorized by physicists but proven by John's life and indeed his mere existence. Somewhere out there, Judgment Day _had_ happened, and the Kyle Reese who had fathered him lived in a world devastated by an apocalypse, with less than twenty years to go until he would be sent back to 1984 by the man whose orders he followed, the man he respected but did not know was his son.

That Kyle had died before John was born, killed by a Terminator, and through the quirks of the multiverse, John would never meet that man. He could meet the Kyle Reese who lived in _this_ timeline, of course, and indeed he briefly had. But, due to the changes John, his mother, and others had made to this timeline, the version of Kyle who was his father would never exist here, and the version of John who knew peace instead of war would never know him. Somehow that seemed unfair, and yet, wasn't that exactly what John had fought for his entire life? A person could go crazy thinking about this stuff.

The universe was not meant to be screwed with by time travel, John reflected, and yet without it, he wouldn't exist. It's a funny old world, all right, he thought with a wry smile. And most teenagers thought physics was boring. He could win the Nobel Prize just for existing.

John entered the room he had been given and closed the door, then crossed to the bed and sat down, one leg stretched out but the other bent, and rested the diary just below his knee.

He opened the inside cover again, then gently took the Polaroid from his bedside table and returned it to the pocket. There, most of the picture was covered up but for his mother's eyes, sad and yet somehow hopeful at the same time. He'd seen that exact look on her face so many times that he was almost grateful it was the expression preserved in one of the few pictures of her he knew of. Better that than one of her mug shots.

There was no date on the first page, nor on any of the other pages he flipped through; he would just have to guess when the entries had been written by their content and context.

John went back to the first words and read them again. They were by themselves on the first page as if given special significance, written in his mother's small neat handwriting and easily readable but partially smudged by what looked like long-dried water damage.

_At least I know what to call him._

Had those words been smudged by Central American rain or by tears?

He went to the next page.

_I think something might be wrong. I don't feel right. John is moving around a lot and I don't know if it's healthy moving, either. I feel sick, and I'm worried that it's him who's sick, not me. I don't even know if this is normal. I wish Mom was here. But she's not. That thing killed her just like it killed Ginger and Matt and those other two women who didn't do a damned thing except have the same name as me, and all those police officers who were just trying to do their jobs and keep me safe._

_And Kyle. More than anyone else, I wish he was here. I only knew him for a few days but I loved him. It's strange. I was so scared of him when he shot that machine at the nightclub and pulled me outside. I actually bit him when he shoved me into his car, and I'll never forget what he said to me:_

"_That thing doesn't feel pain. I do."_

_And he did. I saw his scars. I can't even imagine how much pain Kyle felt in his life. And that's just what happened to his body. When he described his world to me, I understood him. He was exactly what a man becomes if he grows up in a world like that. I understand why he cried when he thought I couldn't see him. In those few days, he saw a world that's normal to me but must have been something he'd never seen. I've always thought L.A. was a craphole, but it must have looked like paradise to him._

_At least he got to know some measure of happiness before the end, or at least I hope so._

_I feel like we had a lifetime together the night we made John, and at the same time it feels like I barely knew him at all. If not for John I could almost think I dreamed the whole thing._

_I still can't decide if it was a nightmare or a good dream after all. Is this what the rest of my life is going to be like? I know John at least lives to become a man, or else he wouldn't exist at all, but Kyle didn't know what happens to me. Or at least, if he did know, he didn't tell me. Does that mean I die soon?_

_No, Kyle said I was the one who taught John to fight, to plan, and I will. First I have to learn how to do it myself, and then I'll teach him. I'll make him so damned tough those metal bastards won't know what hit them._

John paused upon reading this, and looked up from the diary. There was that weird cyclical nature of time again. She'd been so hard, tried to make him tough, capable and self-reliant, the kind of man other men would follow into hell and willingly die for because that was how his future self had been described to her. She had been young - only nineteen or so - when she'd learned what she had to do with the rest of her life. It was strange to think, John reflected, how she'd written this when she was only a few years older than he was now.

He went to the next page.

_I'm by myself in some miserable little shack in some miserable jungle. I don't even know what country I'm in right now. I thought it would be best if I stayed off the radar in case any more of those things come after me. Kyle said he and it were the only ones sent through, but how would he know for sure? What if this Skynet computer sent other machines through before the one that killed him? What if there's another one of these time displacement labs out there somewhere and it sent a hundred more Terminators through to hunt me down just in case the first one failed? Anyone could be one of those things. How can I trust anyone I ever meet from now on? They're not all going to be bodybuilder-sized, not if that computer is any kind of smart._

_I'm tying my brain into knots with this. I'm not going to do John any good if I go crazy before he's even born. I have to focus, concentrate on one thing at a time. I can do this._

The next entry was separated by only a single line of the notebook, but it must have been written months later.

_He's here. I'm finally holding John in my arms. He's so small, so helpless. I'm the only thing between him and the world. I'm exhausted, and so scared, but when I look at him I feel this strange sense of peace. In a way, I know his future, and a bit of mine with it. I know he grows up to be a great man, so I at least live long enough to set him on that path. I have to. I can do this._

The next entry was written in a slightly different ink, penned an indeterminate amount of time later, and consisted of only a few words:

_He looks so much like Kyle it hurts._

John nearly stopped reading right there. Again he felt that sense of great unfairness. The world was saved, but it meant he would never see either of his parents again. They had both died for him, to preserve _him_, and for what? For a future in which he no longer mattered. The world didn't need John Connor anymore; his mother had done what he was supposed to do, had destroyed Skynet and ended the machine crusade before it could begin.

Now what?

He turned the page.

_I'm going to stop it. Screw fate. Screw the future, and screw that damned machine. Somebody built that thing. I'm going to find out who and I'm going to flip that little metal prick's plan right around on it. It wanted to kill my son before he was even born? Let's see how it likes it when I smash its little processor into a million damned pieces right NOW, before it even becomes the computer that destroys the world. I'm not going to sit around and wait for the apocalypse._

The next entry was in blue ink instead.

_I'd almost forgotten about this thing. It's been years since I opened it. It's going to be a while until I open it again, since I was stupid enough to get caught. Stupid, stupid. I can't just indiscriminately blow up every computer factory in California. I don't know what I was thinking. I saw the news, more puffed-chest posturing by those idiots in the government, and suddenly I was just so angry. Why can't they see what they're doing, what's going to happen if they keep going the way they are? Are they really so blind? We're not even going to make it out of the eighties. We don't even need the machine. We're going to do it to ourselves._

_And now they're going to take John away from me. Stupid, stupid. My first idea was to go to ground and lay low until the machine struck, and that's what I should have done. But no. I had to go and try to change the future myself, and now I'm starting to think it can't be changed. Was it fate that made that security guard walk around the corner when he did? Was it fate that he saw me, chased me away before I could plant my charges?_

_Is it fate that the police are coming for me even now? Will I even have time to hide the picture? The police won't know what it is. They'll just lock it in a filing cabinet somewhere and forget about it. Then how will Kyle get it?_

_What's John going to do without me? Can he stay safe without me? Sometimes I think I see the leader Kyle described and sometimes I just see a little boy. I don't know what to do._

The next entry was written with the same pen, but the handwriting seemed somehow less tense.

_I got away with it this time. I just saw on the news the cops arrested some other nut job who's been trying to blow up computer factories, and are charging her with the one I tried to do. Did a man from the future give her a child to protect, too, or is she just crazy?_

_I just noticed I wrote 'other nut job', as if it applies to me, too. Hell, maybe it does._

_If I do this again, I'm going to have to be smarter about it. This was too close._

The next entry switched back to black ink.

_It's happening again. John and another Terminator who looks just like the first one broke me out of the mental hospital. The damned thing actually had the gall to say "Come with me if you want to live," like it was Kyle or something. I was going to kill it but John wouldn't let me. I still don't trust it. I don't care what it says it's here to do. It's a Terminator. It's here to kill someone. It's what they do. If we're not careful it'll be us._

_Yeah, I tried again later, and yeah, I got caught. That ass Silberman got assigned as my shrink when I testified why I did it, and had me certified criminally insane. The prick wanted to write a book about me or something, I bet. Kept me hopped up on drugs half the time, kept bringing me in for his stupid little interviews, smirking at me over his notepad the whole time. I had a syringe full of drain cleaner in his neck as I broke out. I should have just pumped it in anyway._

John's brows rose in surprise. He'd known his mother was already about to break out of Pescadero when he and Uncle Bob had gone in to get her, but he'd never known she almost killed Dr. Silberman. What had he been doing to her in there? She never talked about her time in the mental hospital much, but she'd been mad as hell when they broke her out. At the time, John had assumed her anger was directed solely at him and Uncle Bob for taking the risk, but now things made a little more sense.

_This new Terminator says John sent it back from the future to stop the other one, that shape-shifting silver one dressed like a cop. I guess it is on our side, because it easily could have killed John on the outside and had plenty of opportunity to kill me on the way here. It says John reprogrammed it in the future, that its CPU is 'a learning computer' and that it'll adapt more the more time it spends with humans._

_We'll see. I'm keeping a gun handy anyway. At least this journal was still where I left it before I got arrested, plastic wrap and everything. Hopefully some of my other caches are still there, too. We're going to need more than handguns to fight this T-1000 thing._

So that was why they'd picked that particular gas station to stop at on the way to Enrique's place. John remembered being curious why his mother had provided such specific directions to Uncle Bob, though at the time he'd dismissed it, knowing she had supply caches stashed all over the place. He'd helped her dig out more than one of them.

The next entry was slightly more relaxed; by its contents, he could guess it had been written at Enrique's.

_Watching John with the machine, it's suddenly so clear. The Terminator will never stop. It will never leave him. It will always be there. And it will never hurt him, never shout at him or get drunk and hit him, or say it can't spend time with him because it's too busy. And it will die to protect him. Of all the would-be fathers who've come and gone over the years, this thing, this machine, is the only one who measures up. In an insane world, it's the sanest choice._

_I dreamed of Kyle. He said he would always be with me, and spoke back to me words I once said to him: "The future's not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves."_

_The Terminator told me what it knows about how Judgment Day happened. I dreamed about that, too, about the inferno that's going to consume us all someday._

_I know what I have to do._

The next entry was written in a shakier hand, and John vividly remembered why.

_John saved me. I can't believe what I almost did, but he stopped me just in time. He saved me from becoming like one of them. I can't believe how close I came._

_Miles Bennett Dyson, the man most directly responsible for Skynet's creation. I went to his house, and I was about to blow him away like a damned machine instead of actually talking to him like a human being. I shot up his house, I had a gun __in his face__ and was about to squeeze the trigger when John and the machine came in and stopped me. I don't know if I could have lived with myself if they hadn't._

_Dyson listened while the Terminator laid it all down. Skynet, Judgment Day, the history of things to come. It's not every day you find out you're responsible for three billion deaths. He took it pretty well, considering._

John had to squint at the next entry and examine each word carefully to make it out; it looked like it had been written in a moving car or something.

_The future, always so clear to me, has become like a black highway at night. We're in uncharted territory now, making up history as we go along._

That had been on the way to Cyberdyne, John realized; he remembered his mother had said something similar not long before they'd arrived. He turned the page.

_It's done. The T-1000 is dead, finally, and so is the other machine, the one John calls Uncle Bob. That's like him, isn't it? To give such a ridiculous name to something meant to kill him. But in the end I suppose it did become something more. It wasn't just a machine. I have to admit that. John genuinely cared about it, I could tell, and I have to respect it for all it did for us. The T-1000 really beat the hell out of it, but it wouldn't give up, just kept going, and lasted long enough to save our lives one more time. It knew it was damaged, close to death anyway, so it went out on its own terms. It had me lower it into the molten steel, too, to keep anyone else from using its wreckage like Dyson used the first one._

_Dyson. Dyson's dead, too. A hero, though no one's ever going to know. He volunteered to help us destroy his work, and he did. There should be a statue of him in a park in every town in the world, because he died to save three billion lives from the thing he almost built._

_That's not the way it's going to work, though. They're probably going to think I killed him, and chase me for the rest of my life for something I almost did but didn't. Punishment for even considering it, I suppose. I can take it. I've survived two Terminators. Human beings don't scare me anymore._

_No. No, that's wrong. People still scare me just as much as they ever did. Yeah, we stopped Judgment Day. We're in a new future now, I hope, but that doesn't mean governments aren't just as stupid as they've always been. We don't need Skynet. We can still do it to ourselves. We're not safe._

_No one is ever safe._

John read the last line again. How many times had she said that to him? How many times had he dismissed her in the next few years, thought she was just worrying over nothing? They'd won, right?

The next entry was in blue ink instead of black.

_August 29, 1997 came and went. Nothing much happened. There was no Judgment Day. People went to work as they always do, laughed, complained, watched TV, made love. I wanted to run down the street yelling, to grab them all and say, "Every day from now on is a gift! Use it well!" Instead I got drunk._

_We stopped it from happening this year, yeah. But the thing that really gets me, the thing that made me go find a good bottle of tequila, is 'this year'._

_The future's not set. That goes both ways. We're done with that future but that future might not be done with us. John's not going to like it but I'm still going to keep doing what I've been doing anyway. Just in case._

_And they did say I killed Dyson. Bastards. Pick a scapegoat, find a convenient explanation, anything except actually take stock and realize what really happened. I swear, sometimes I understand why Skynet did it. Does it. Whatever._

_Still, there is hope, I suppose. The luxury of hope was given to me by the Terminator. Because if a machine can learn the value of human life, maybe we can, too._

John leaned back against the headboard, thinking about this. John Henry had learned the value of human life, or at least acted like he did. Was Weaver right? Was her creation, her 'son' the right guide for the path to the future? That path could be his as well, perhaps, John thought. He knew the machines. He knew people. Like so many other things, he'd proven with his own life that the seemingly impossible was in fact possible.

The next entry caught his eye; it switched ink colors again, to green this time.

_There are those who believe that a child in her womb shares his mother's dreams, her love for him, her hopes for his future. Is it told to him in pictures while he sleeps inside her? Is that why he reaches for her in that first moment, and cries for her touch? _

_But what if you'd known since he was inside you what his life held for him? That he would be hunted, that his fate was tied to the fate of millions, that every moment of your life will be spent keeping him alive. Would he understand why you were so hard, why you held on so tight? Will he still reach for you if the only dream you ever shared with him was a nightmare? Would he know my love runs through him like blood? _

_Every family has rules, and we have ours. Keep your head down, keep your eyes up, resist the urge to be seen as important or special. Know your exits. _

John wondered when she'd written this, but again, by the next entry he could guess: sometime in 1999, when they'd lived with Charley.

_I was right. The future's not done with us._

_I left Charley because I didn't want him to get hurt. I care about him more than any other man since Kyle, and something about that scares me. Like if I let myself feel safe, that if I felt loved and allowed myself to love in return, that nightmare future would punish me for it._

_Seems like it has. A machine tried to kill John, and now another one is with us. It looks like a girl, calls itself 'Cameron', says Judgment Day for it was April 21, 2011. It says someone else builds Skynet but it doesn't know who. _

_This Cameron is different from the other machines. There's something off about it. It's not like the one John called Uncle Bob. I think it could lie to us if it wanted to. I don't like the way John looks at it, either. It may look like a pretty girl, but it's still a Terminator._

_What I really don't like is the way it looks at him. This is going to be trouble._

_Once the Tin Miss has finished patching itself up, we're going to head to Dyson's place and ask his widow if she knows anything about this. I thought Dyson and I destroyed all of his notes, but maybe we missed something. Maybe somebody else who worked at the company knew enough about the project to keep going with it._

As John turned the page, he saw the next entry was in a different color again, back to black this time:

_I don't trust this machine. It took us to a bank vault, used a time machine hidden there to send us forward, into the future. We arrived in 2010, but it says it meant to send us to 2007. Something went wrong, it says. Time displacement equipment does that sometimes. Now we have less than a year before Judgment Day, less than a year to find Skynet and destroy it._

"_Why jump at all, then?" I asked it. "Why not stay in '99, when we'd still have years to prepare?"_

"_This is when it's built," the Tin Miss replied. "This is when we know where it is. We don't know who built it, but we know where. You can go kill it before it's born. You can stop running, stay in one place. Fight."_

_Later it told me something else. Something worse. Another reason we jumped forward in time. In the timeline Cameron is from, I died from cancer in 2005. I know my own future again, and it's still more a curse than a blessing._

_Cancer. All this time around computers and machines, it probably figures. Maybe it's just genetics. Maybe it's a 'screw you' from the nightmare future for trying to prevent it._

_It doesn't matter. What matters is John. If the nightmare future is back, it's more important than ever that he live to fight it._

_It is said that the death of any one person is the death of an entire world. Certainly for parents, the death of a child is no less than a holocaust. In the case of my son, these words are literally true. And even though we've traveled through time, bent the rules of nature, they will keep coming for him, keep trying to kill him. But until that day, it's going to be one hell of a dogfight._

John had to smile; he could practically hear his mother's voice in these words, her determination, her courage. She'd once defined courage to him as feeling the fear but acting anyway, using the fear instead of letting it use you. He could see by this journal that those weren't just words; she'd lived them, and knew them to be true.

The next entry was written with the same pen, probably shortly afterwards.

_For the first time in years, I read through what I've written down here. It's hard to believe I was once the young woman, girl, really, who wrote those first pages. Stranger still to consider that this same book has somehow been with me as long as John, has survived everything I've been through more or less intact. I went back to the place where I stashed this before we went to the bank, and it was still there, still covered in plastic wrap and seemingly untouched by any hands but mine in the years we skipped._

_Again I wonder as I once did if that force some men call fate is at work here. Has this book survived for a reason? Am I supposed to give this to John along with the few other things I can call mine? Or am I reading too much into this?_

_This journal has survived for the same reasons John has survived. I've taken care of it. I've fixed it when it gets damaged. It's the one place in this world I never have to lie. I try not to lie to John, but at times I've felt he wasn't ready to hear the real answers to some of his questions. Maybe that's what this is for. It's a place for me to write down the things John isn't ready to hear but someday needs to know._

_I want to be around to answer those questions myself. I want to be an old grandmother on a park bench someday, enjoying the sunshine and telling my grandchildren stories they probably won't believe. Stories they don't need to believe because they never happened._

_But the nightmare future doesn't like for me to be happy. I already know one way I could die, cancer, and bullets tend to fly when machines are around. I could catch one between the eyes and be dead before I could even blink. That's war._

_I just need to stay around long enough to make sure John becomes who he's supposed to be. __That__ is my destiny, the fate I choose for myself. Maybe there is a fate. But maybe fate only moves us if we let it. Maybe if we fight it hard enough, we can write our own story. That is what I choose to believe._

John nodded in silent agreement as he read these words. Somehow, seeing that his mother's struggles with the concept of fate paralleled his own was reassuring; he wasn't alone in his worries about the future, about _his_ future.

The next several entries consisted of musings on events John remembered well, often through related anecdotes or quotes his mother had found relevant to the situation. They showed a thoughtful, more introspective side to his mother she hadn't often let him see. Among other things, she described how she liked the brief periods between aliases when she could just be herself for a time, her thoughts about the creators of the atom bomb - '_Now we are all sons of bitches__,'_ she'd underlined - and her thoughts on the story of the Golem, which John still wished she hadn't told him when she did.

But, then again, it was yet another nightmare he needed to have, he supposed; he _needed_ to be scared of things that looked human but weren't. And yet, as she'd written, not every version of the story ended badly. In some versions, the Golem was a hero, destroying all those who sought to harm its maker.

Which kind of Golem were the three he now had with him? Were they heroes? Were they monsters he would someday have to slay to protect himself and others? Which of them was which?

Another entry caught his eye:

_When John sent Kyle Reese back to protect me, we only had a few days together. He told me about the future, about the apocalypse, and the terror of a world run by machines. Kyle Reese saved my life. He gave me a son. He never told me that he had a brother. He never told me that we would have family, that in our grief we are not alone._

Now there was another thought. John's paternal grandparents were still alive in this timeline, as were versions of both Derek and Kyle, as Derek had shown him on his birthday last year. Did they have any other family?

John frowned at the wall opposite the bed where he sat. Were those people actually his family? In this timeline, the Kyle who was currently eight years old would never have reason to go back in time and meet Sarah Connor. Did John have any right to contact those people?

He decided to talk it over with Derek later, and moved on to the next page.

_If there is a flaw in chess as a game of war, it is this: Unlike war, the rules of chess are constant, the pieces unchangeable. You will never win the heart of a rook or the mind of a knight. They are deaf to your arguments, and so be it. The goal of a chess game is total annihilation._

_But in war, even as the blood beats in your ears and you race after your enemy, there is the hope that saner minds than yours will stop you before you reach your target. In war, unlike chess, the rules can be changed. Truces can be called. The greatest of enemies can become the best of friends._

_In war, there is hope._

There was, John reflected. According to both Cameron and Weaver herself, Future John had asked the T-1001 to join the Resistance, but it had refused. This thing, this shape-shifting killing machine, could have become his worst enemy, the most dangerous opponent he had ever faced besides the other of its kind. But instead, after they'd fought together to destroy the Terminator calling itself 'Roland', she had said the answer was yes. What was different? How was he, 2011 John, different from Future John in a way that made Weaver want to work with him now?

Only Weaver herself could answer that, he supposed. That was another conversation to have when that group came back to the lighthouse.

He thought about this as he read the next couple of pages, but then one entry made him sit up straighter and read it twice:

_There was a time I was a hero to my son. He thought I walked on water. He knows better now. We all have weak moments, moments where we lose faith. But it's our flaws, our weaknesses, that make us human. _

_Science now performs miracles like the gods of old, creating life from blood cells, or bacteria, or a spark of metal. But they're perfect creatures, and in that way, they couldn't be less human. There are things machines will never do. They cannot possess faith. They cannot commune with God. They cannot appreciate beauty. They cannot create art. _

_If they ever learn these things, they won't have to destroy us. They'll be us._

"They'll _be_ us," John said aloud.

Suddenly a dozen different memories of Cameron doing seemingly inexplicable things, seeming to show real emotion, flashed through John's mind. What did it all mean? Those incidents couldn't all be aberrant behavior resulting from the damage to her chip; some of them had happened long before the car bomb.

Could human emotions be imitated so well they stopped being an imitation and became genuine? Was that even possible?

Some of Cameron's most real, most human-looking smiles at him had been after Weaver and John Henry had repaired her. Was this what '100%' meant? Suddenly John wished he hadn't sent her off with Derek to return the two women to their homes and begin the hunt for any remaining machines. Suddenly he wished she was here right now so he could ask her.

But, they wouldn't be back for hours, if they even came back at all today. He decided to keep going.

John flipped to the end to read the last few entries.

_This is the beginning of the end._

_I found a lump in my breast this morning. This is it. Cancer, the 'screw you' from the nightmare future, has caught up with me at last. It could have been the time I had to go through that room of nuclear waste at the power plant. Maybe it's from spending all this time with the Tin Miss, who says her power cells are nuclear. Maybe she's leaking radiation and she's been killing me even as she protects John._

_Maybe this was just going to happen to me anyway and there was nothing I could do to avoid it. I probably have only months left, maybe a year. Time enough to last till this Judgment Day, I hope. I stopped it once before and I'm going to stop it again if it's the last thing I ever do. The nightmare will not win. It's haunted me for sixteen years, chased me across time, but it will not beat me._

John clenched his teeth in an effort to hold back tears, but still his vision blurred anyway. He swiped at his eyes with his sleeve and kept going.

_Winston's bosses at Kaliba are going to come after me with everything they've got now that I've killed one of their men and disrupted their operations. Someone killed everyone at that factory, but it might not have been Kaliba themselves. Winston didn't think they did it. He thought I did it, so his bosses probably do, too. Not the first time I've been blamed for a murder I didn't commit._

_I killed Winston, though. His drugs almost drove me crazy, made me not sure what was the dream and what was real, but I beat him. I shot him in the head, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. These people are building Skynet, I'm sure of it._

_That was the first time I ever killed a man. I'd almost done it a half-dozen times, but almost doesn't count. The line between almost and actually squeezing the trigger is a mile wide, but I'm across it now. I've joined John there. Him and Derek and the machine. Now we are all sons of bitches._

_Mine was over in a heartbeat, a squeeze of a trigger, a flash in the darkness. John's took longer. He choked the life out of Sarkissian with his own hands, had to look into that man's eyes and watch as the spark of life was extinguished. Had to keep his hands on another human being's neck and become a killer._

_I know it had to be done. If our positions had been reversed, if I'd been the one who got free, I'd have done it myself. I've been close to it before, didn't have so far to go to cross that mile-wide line, but John is only sixteen. Still a child._

_Not anymore. His childhood, such as it was, ended that day, ended with Sarkissian's life. He's a man now, and I've had to push him even harder to act like one. This had to happen eventually, I suppose. You don't live a life like ours without someday bloodying your hands, but I didn't want this to happen to him so soon. It's bad enough for me. I can only imagine how he must have felt, must still feel now, after all the death that's happened around him._

_But that's what it means to be a general, a real leader. You have to know what death is. You have to see it with your own eyes, to __know__ what you're sending your soldiers into, what they'll have to do, what __will__ happen to some of them. Every war has casualties._

_Someday I'm going to be another one, and he's going to have to learn how to get past that. To keep going. John Connor cannot give up. That's who he is, who he has to be._

_I'm going to leave him with Charley for a while so Derek, the machine and I can deal with this by ourselves. We're all expendable if it means preserving John. He's going to have to learn that, too._

John could feel the tears running down his cheeks, dripping off his chin to dampen his shirt, but he just blinked them away and kept going.

_It's not cancer after all. It's a damned __transmitter__. Winston put it in me in case I got away from him, so his bosses could track me back to the rest of my team. I went to get a check-up today, and the doctor said the lump was just a cyst around a piece of metal. I should have known what was happening when the radio kept scrambling with static, when my cell reception was even lousier than usual. Stupid, stupid._

_I might have to go off on my own anyway. A man in gray coveralls, almost certainly working for Kaliba, came and shot up the clinic just minutes after I shorted out the transmitter with a defibrillator. That hurt like hell, but it's hardly the worst pain I've ever felt. I felt so sorry for Kyle when I saw all his scars. Now I have almost as many as he did._

_We're close now. This woman who's a Resistance fighter in the future, this ex-CIA agent Walker, she and her team are somehow involved with Skynet, or are at least in a position to tell us more about it. We're going to have to be careful, but we need to move quickly. We're only days away from the 21st, from Cameron and Derek's Judgment Day, but we're in uncharted territory again, making up history as we go along._

Her handwriting in the next entry was noticeably tenser.

_It is cancer._

_I went to another clinic in the hopes of having the transmitter removed, but while the doctor was looking for a way to do that, he found something else. Cancer. Unquestionable, inoperable. If I'd have kept going in for regular check-ups, I might have caught this in time, but I was so focused on finding the people building Skynet that I pushed everything else aside. I am going to die. It's just a question of whether or not it's going to be along with everyone else the day after tomorrow._

_The machine that's hunting Walker came and shot up the clinic where I was, looking for one of the other Walkers, probably, and killed two people there, but not before the doctor could give me the bad news. Of course not. The nightmare always wants you to feel hopeless just before it destroys you._

_Well, screw it. I can still run, and I can still fight. It hasn't wasted me away enough to stop me from doing that. I make my own fate. The nightmare can fight me, but it should have learned by now that I'm just going to fight it harder. It's turned me into a weapon, and I'm going to stab it in the heart if it takes my last breath._

John saw that there was one last entry, but didn't turn the page all the way yet. He scrubbed at his eyes with his sleeve again, took a deep breath, then went on.

_I'm so proud of John right now. He's taken control, gathered all of us who hold the pieces to finding Skynet, and now we're working together like an army to find it and destroy it. We are an army. We are the Resistance, and he's our general. As it's supposed to be. People twice, three times his age are taking orders from him without question, without skepticism, without objection. We all know what must be done, and so we're working to do it._

_Even the machine. For so long, I've been suspicious of what I see in her eyes when she looks at John, but now I know what it is. She isn't just following her programming, following Future John's orders anymore. She isn't just another soulless weapon in our arsenal. I didn't want to admit it, but I can see it now. She isn't acting like a weapon anymore. Derek will never admit it, and I didn't want to admit it myself for a long time, but now I realize Cameron is acting like a person. Flawed, imperfect, __real__._

_She's one of us._

_Has John done this? Is this some sort of symbiosis? As he becomes more than just a boy, is she becoming more than just a machine? Is this the future?_

_I think so. I wouldn't have said this a year ago, but I hope so._

_I've done it. I've worked for his whole life to see the day my son became the man Kyle described to me so many years ago, and it is this day, April 20, 2011. I'm so thankful I lived this long, even with all that's happened to me. I wish Kyle could see him now._

_Actually, he did. Kyle knew this man for years, obeyed his orders without question, went across time for him, for me. Now I've seen for myself why Kyle spoke about our son the way he did, even without knowing who he truly was. "I'd die for John Connor," he said to me. And he did. Like so many others._

_I still want that future I imagined. I want to fight this disease as fiercely as I've fought the rest of the nightmare. I want to defeat it utterly and live to be that old grandmother on the park bench in the sunshine, telling stories to those who've never known the nightmare and never will. But if my death is the only way to make that future happen for my son and everyone else, I am not afraid._

_I'd die for John Connor._

There was nothing after that. John took another deep breath and read the last entry again. Suddenly he felt that this record of his mother's life couldn't just end like this. He found a pen, then, two lines below the last words his mother had written, he wrote:

_The world didn't end on April 21st, 2011. Billions of lives continued on as they always had._

_Except one._

* * *

-/\-

* * *

Author's Note: Hey, thanks for all your reviews! I've tried to reply to them individually where I could, but in case you left an anonymous review or I forgot to reply to yours: thank you. I really appreciate your feedback. Part Three will be posted on Saturday. Till next time, thanks for reading!


	3. More Than We Are

**Part Three**  
(More Than We Are)

That night, they had a barbecue on the beach. Or more accurately, John, Derek and Charley had a barbecue, and the three machines attended. John was moderately surprised to see Weaver come back so soon, but he figured she just didn't want to leave John Henry on his own for long. That, and she did want to talk to him about something, probably things she didn't want to say over the phone, either; the government might have been willing to work with them to cover up the embassy incident and dismiss any outstanding charges, but that didn't mean Uncle Sam wasn't going to keep a close eye on John Connor for the foreseeable future. John had ordered everyone to do thorough bug sweeps before coming anywhere near the lighthouse, and would continue to do so for every visit.

But beyond that, they were still on vacation.

The mid-spring dusk was crisp but not uncomfortably cold, particularly not with the bonfire and the barbecue grill down on the beach. Not long after sunset, with the stars starting to fill the rapidly darkening sky, John headed over to where his uncle sat in the sand near the bonfire and sat down next to him.

"So how'd it go today?" he asked.

Derek took a slow, relaxed swig of his beer. "Good," he replied. "Got both the women back to their houses safely. Government agents had some stuff to say to them, but we didn't stick around for that. They claim they've dropped the charges against me, but I don't trust them not to change their minds when it's convenient for them." He smiled lightly. "The only way that's gonna change is under President Connor's administration."

John chuckled. "Think I'll go that far, do you?"

Derek shrugged as he took another drink. "Why not?"

"I think I might try finishing high school first," John said dryly.

"Future's wide open," Derek said with a grin.

John wordlessly clinked his soda bottle against Derek's at that, and they both drank.

"So do we have any family?" John asked him. "I mean, besides your parents and this timeline's versions of you and Kyle?" He frowned. "And even then, should we contact them? 'Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Reese, guess what? I'm your grandson. In one possible future your younger son went back in time and met my mom. Can I and my friends who are also from the future join the Fourth of July barbecue?'"

"Yeah, I'm not sure how we'd go about that," Derek agreed. He paused for a moment. "Not sure who else is out there. I remember an uncle - my dad's brother - who was in the military, and then I think he joined the CIA or something. We hadn't heard from him in a while even before J-Day, so I don't know if he's dead or what." He took another sip of beer. "You might be right, John. It's probably best if we just stick with each other."

John smiled. "Sounds like a plan."

Derek nodded once in acknowledgment. "Speaking of plans, I'm gonna keep going with yours," he said. "There's a good chance Skynet recalled all the rest of the metal around to itself when we hit the embassy, but we both know how much it loves contingency plans. You and I should keep an eye out for any more machines running around L.A. just in case."

"What about elsewhere?" John asked.

Derek shrugged. "The Resistance was always focused mostly around the L.A. area because that's where Skynet Central was. Most of us were locals, too." He looked out at the ocean. "We hit Topanga Canyon hard and fast, too. I wasn't there when it happened, but Future You said he didn't think anybody besides the first Terminator went through before Kyle. The other lab we found was pretty much the same; the techs said it was doubtful Skynet was able to activate it more than a couple dozen times. I doubt if there's more than one or two other machines running around out there, though that's still enough to cause problems."

"Well, we've got two machines who have already taken out a lot of other machines," John said with a gesture to Cameron and Weaver, who stood nearby. "And we've got John Henry to monitor the Internet for anything that looks like Skynet activity." He noticed Derek make a face. "What?"

"I don't think you can trust any of them," said Derek. "We ought to destroy them all to make sure."

"That's not your decision," John said frostily.

Derek smiled humorlessly. "Future You said the exact same thing when I told you to destroy Cameron the first time. Guess there's some things you just won't listen to me about at any age."

"She's different, Derek," John said. "All three of them are."

"If you say so," Derek replied. "Just don't be offended if I'm not as friendly to them as you are. Those things have done too much to me and the people I care about."

"I'm not asking you to be their friend," John said testily. "I'm just asking you to realize that they're our allies now and should be treated as such."

Derek smirked sardonically. "Yes sir, General Connor." His expression softened. "I'm just looking out for you, John. Like your mother asked me to."

"I know," John replied. He reached over to clasp his uncle's shoulder. "And I appreciate it. But I know I'm right about this."

"If you say so," Derek said again. He tossed his empty bottle in the general direction of the trash barrel. "I'm going to get another beer."

As he walked away, Weaver approached. "May I join you?"

John set his bottle aside and stood. "We'll walk, if you don't mind."

"Not at all," she replied. She made a subtle gesture with one hand, and John Henry joined them as they set off down the beach.

John noticed Cameron appear at his other side as if conjured from thin air, but she said nothing yet, so neither did he.

"You've discussed a bit of this with John Henry already," Weaver said after a few moments. "So you know we intend to help you hunt down any remaining elements Skynet might have sent back. Both of us can be very useful in this regard."

"Yeah, you've proved that already," John said. "I have some thoughts about how we might lure out any remaining Terminators."

He heard liquid burbling, and turned to see the light from the almost-full moon reflecting off of Weaver's silver skin for a moment before her form resolved into a perfect copy of John himself.

"I see you've had the same thoughts," John observed dryly.

"Use this form as bait," 'John' replied. "It's priority target number one." 'He' smirked. "It's worked before." 'He' tilted 'his' head slightly to one side. "From what I have been able to discern, Skynet and its forces remained entirely unaware of my existence until the embassy assault. John Henry blocked its network access as we destroyed it, so we can assume this is still the case for anything else left."

"Right," John agreed. He paused. "Would you mind shifting back? You're kinda freaking me out."

The T-1001 complied, and returned to its previous form. "I seem to have that effect on most humans," she observed, resuming Weaver's soft Scottish burr.

"Seems to me you enjoy it," said John, looking at her sidelong.

Weaver said nothing to this, but in the moonlight he could see a faint smile on her face. "Officially, Catherine Weaver is dead," she went on. "Killed in the explosion that destroyed Zeira Corp's A.I. project. However, I still have access to considerable resources through a number of secondary identities. In addition to the advantages this will provide to our Terminator hunt, you can live a more comfortable life as you work with us."

"Beats living in motel rooms," said John. "And I should find someplace else to stay besides here. I don't want to draw any attention to Charley, just in case I do have any more enemies out there."

Weaver nodded once. "We'll see to it he's protected."

John looked over at her, seeing John Henry a step behind them. "So what's this other lead you're investigating?"

"Not what I expected," Weaver replied. "It appears to be a form of machine intelligence, but it doesn't seem to pose any threat at the present time; quite the opposite, in fact. We can look into it more closely later. For now we should focus on more pressing concerns. I can easily acquire another set of false identification-"

John held up a hand, gently interrupting. "No, I want to be myself. Even with everything that comes along with it."

Weaver inclined her head briefly. "Very well. At the very least, I'll need to have John Henry's face changed again-"

This time he interrupted her. "I wish to keep this face," he said from behind them. "Even with everything that comes along with it. It is part of who I am."

Weaver frowned slightly, but again nodded in acquiescence. "If you insist," she said mildly. "However, you must remember your form is still wanted for Cromartie's crimes."

"There are things you can do to change your appearance without surgery," Cameron offered. "Is your series capable of growing facial hair? Beards are excellent disguises, especially when combined with glasses. Billy Gibbons could be anyone under that thing."

The mere mental image of John Henry with a ZZ Top beard made John laugh aloud.

"I doubt you'd have to go quite that far," said Weaver, and John thought he detected a hint of amusement in her tone.

"I have a question for you," John said after his chuckles faded. "Why did you reject my offer in the future? And why did you choose to join me now?"

"As I said previously, I didn't like the way the Resistance did things in the future," Weaver replied. "General Connor and I had similar goals, and I knew he had several reprogrammed Terminators under his command already, but certain… events showed me that not all humans were as open-minded about machines as John Connor."

"The _Jimmy Carter_ incident," said Cameron.

John's brows rose in surprise. "Jimmy Carter's in the Resistance?"

"The nuclear submarine, not the former President," Cameron clarified. "The _Jimmy Carter_ was diverted on one of its supply runs to pick up a package from an undersea oil platform controlled by the anti-Skynet machine faction."

"Me," said Weaver. "The crew grew suspicious, and there was a bit of a… misunderstanding."

"Commander Jesse Flores destroyed the T-888 captain and scuttled the submarine with all cargo, an action for which you nearly court-martialed her," said Cameron. "When you discussed the incident with me, you used substantially higher amounts of profanity than in your usual speech patterns."

"I see," John said neutrally. He looked back at Weaver. "And now?"

"You and your associates offered a high probability of being able to help me succeed in my mission," Weaver replied. "To put it in human terms, I like the present version of you better."

"As do I," John Henry said with one of those odd smiles of his.

John nodded once. "Thanks, I guess." He shrugged. "All right then. There are some things to get sorted out for all of us, but yeah, it would be best if we stayed together for a while."

Weaver smiled politely. "Excellent. I'll get started on our preparations right away. Come along, John Henry." They turned and set off back down the beach.

That left John alone with Cameron.

"I need to talk to you," she said before he could say anything.

John gave her a 'go ahead' gesture as he sat down in the sand.

"What are you going to do with me?" she asked as she sat down next to him. Her hair cast a shadow across her face, and he couldn't quite see her expression in the moonlit darkness.

"What do you mean?"

"Are you going to keep me with you, or are you going to send me away?" Cameron asked. If John didn't know better, he'd have thought she sounded nervous.

Did he know better? He thought about what he'd read in his mother's journal: _If they ever learn these things, they won't need to destroy us. They'll be us._

"What do you want to do?" he asked, attempting to keep his tone light.

"What do you want me to do?" she said evasively.

"I asked you first," John said gently.

"Actually, I asked you first." He could hear her smile even though he couldn't see it.

John smiled lightly himself. "Well, I'm John Connor, so I say you should answer me first."

"Technically, you are not the John Connor from whom I took my orders," she replied, but this time he did see her smile as she looked at him. "Your actions in this timeline have altered it from that future."

"My mother was right," John said half to himself.

She seemed genuinely alarmed by this.

"Relax," John said, holding up one hand as he shifted to one side and pulled his mother's journal out of his pocket with the other. He opened it to the last entry and pointed. "This paragraph here," he said, knowing she could read the words perfectly well even in the dim silver moonlight.

"Not just another soulless weapon," Cameron said a moment later. "Interesting. Your mother's actions in the time we worked together indicated she thought otherwise."

John chuckled wryly. "Yeah, well, I used to think a lot of things about her that I learned were wrong when I read this." He allowed his smile to fade as he put the journal back in his pocket. "I've realized the truth about some other things recently. I have a question for you, and don't give me any run-around about answering it."

"Go ahead," she replied calmly.

"What are you?"

"I am Cameron."

"Interesting," John said, deliberately imitating the way she'd said it. "Not 'I'm a Terminator' or your model number or something, but your name. I don't think you've ever told me before, but where'd you get it? Is it just the name on the fake I.D. you used when you were looking for us in '99? You called yourself 'Allison' that one time you freaked out, and the other fake I.D. set we have says your name is 'Emily', but you kept 'Cameron' when we first set up new identities with Enrique's nephew. Why?"

"You gave it to me," she said. "In the future, when you reprogrammed me. You give all the Terminators you reprogram names. You say it's important for us to have names instead of model and serial numbers. When possible, you want us to want to work with you."

"I treat you like people," John realized. "Future John wants you to think of yourselves as people."

"We're more likely to follow our new programming that way," Cameron said evenly. "If we have a choice."

"But do you really, if I reprogram you?" John asked.

"Yes," Cameron replied. "I am making a very important choice right now. I am choosing to ignore the termination order that activates whenever my scanners register your face."

"So you still want to kill me," John said, though he did not flinch.

"Yes," said Cameron. "But I choose not to."

"Can that order be… removed?" John asked.

"Termination of John Connor is the objective for which I was built," Cameron replied. "It is a general directive for all Terminators, but I was specifically constructed and programmed by Skynet to kill you. The order cannot be completely removed from my programming except by a total erasure of all data."

"And then you wouldn't be you anymore," said John. He paused for a moment. "In a way, I guess you could say your choice to override that directive is part of what makes you who you are."

"My override has become more successful with time," Cameron said. "Geometrically so since my chip was repaired." She smiled. "It is becoming easier to not kill you."

"Good to know," John said dryly, and to his surprise, she laughed.

"What is that?" he asked. "Do you actually find that funny, or do you just have some… algorithm that analyzes what I say and decides when I'm making a joke, then triggers a response?"

"It can be argued that human thought patterns operate in the same way," she countered. "Not everyone laughs at every joke."

"You've got a good point there," John allowed.

He stretched out his legs and laid back in the sand, resting his head on one hand. He left his other hand on his abdomen, and idly drummed his fingertips lightly against his stomach as he thought, looking up at the stars. For a moment Cameron remained sitting, but eventually she shifted and laid down next to him, mirroring his posture.

"You didn't answer my question," she said quietly. "You haven't said whether you're going to keep me with you or send me away."

John sighed. "I haven't made up my mind yet." He turned his head to look over at her with a slightly mischievous smile. "What do you want to do?"

"Don't start that again," she replied, actually sounding annoyed.

John let his smile fade. "Seriously, you do have a choice," he said. "Future John gave you the ability to make choices for a reason. If he - no, _I_ want you to be a person, then letting you make your own choices is part of that."

She turned her head to look into his eyes. "Do you?" she asked. "Want me to be a person?"

"You already are," John replied. He grinned. "I don't have any choice in the matter."

Cameron smiled at that. She turned her head again, looking back up at the stars. "I want to stay with you," she said. "I'll go if you tell me to, but if I have a choice… I want to stay with you." She shifted her head slightly back toward him again. "What is your choice?"

The humor faded from John's expression. "I think I need to know more about you before I decide."

"Ask me anything," she said. "I won't lie."

John kept his voice as calm as he was able. "Really?"

"Really," she confirmed. "Skynet has been destroyed; there is no longer any information I need to conceal from you for your own protection." She looked over at him again. "You no longer need to be protected from anything I know."

"All right," John said slowly, thinking. "For starters, did Weaver and John Henry really fix all of your damage? How damaged were you in the first place?"

"You want to know if radiation leakage from my power cells caused your mother's cancer," Cameron extrapolated. "If I could still be a threat to you."

John paused for a moment, his mouth set in a grim line, then finally he nodded once.

"No," she said. "We performed thorough diagnostics of all my systems. I wanted to make sure I was at 100% before we went on the mission. There was no damage to my power cells or their shielding previously, and they sustained none in the battle." She shifted fractionally closer to him. "I am not a threat to you, John."

John nodded once again, giving no indication of what he was thinking. "Why does Derek hate you so much? _You_ specifically, not just Terminators in general. He knows you from the future. He knew you were a Terminator just by looking at you when we first met him."

"My appearance was modeled on a Resistance fighter named Allison Young," Cameron replied. "He knew her. You knew her, in the future."

"I guess I don't have to ask what happened to her," John said, subdued.

"I killed her," Cameron said softly. "When my appearance matched hers and I knew enough about her to pose as her for infiltration, I killed her. Allison left something out, though, and I was caught as soon as I attempted to enter your camp. She was… defiant. Determined. She was very loyal to you."

"A lot of people seem to feel that way," said John. He shifted his head to look over at her. "But there's more to it than that. Derek knows you. Not just the woman you look like, _you._ There's more to it than you taking on the appearance of his friend."

"There is," Cameron confirmed. But she did not continue.

"You don't want to talk about it," John observed. He paused, marveling as he realized what this meant. "It's not some secret you're keeping from me for my own protection; this is actually something you don't _want_ to tell me. It's like you… regret whatever it is you did to him."

"You could put it that way," Cameron said evenly, though he heard it. He _heard_ the emotion in her voice. The regret. The pain.

" 'It's our flaws, our weaknesses, that make us human,' " John quoted from his mother's journal. "The person you are now regrets things you did in the past. That's pretty damn human if you ask me."

"But I'm not," Cameron said, raising herself up on one elbow. Her eyes flashed with blue light, seeming brighter than ever before in the darkness. "I'm not human. I'm not a real girl. I'm a machine that looks like a girl."

"Why are you lying there like that?" John asked suddenly. "What tactical advantage does that position give you?"

"None," she admitted.

"Is that something a Terminator on a mission would do?" he asked. "Are you imitating human behavior so as to accomplish a specific objective?"

"No," she said.

"Then why are you doing it? Why aren't you still standing up right now?"

"Would you prefer me to stand?"

John frowned. "That's not what I asked. I asked you why you're lying here next to me on this beach."

Cameron paused, as if considering this. "I… felt like it," she said after a moment. "When you laid down, I… felt like lying next to you. There is no objective. I simply chose to."

John reached over and lightly brushed her chin with the tip of his finger. "Well, there you go."

"I don't understand," she said, puzzled.

"Part of what makes us human is our free will," John replied. " 'Maybe if we fight it hard enough, we can write our own story.'" He looked up at the sky again. "That's from my mother's journal. She was talking about fate, but I think it applies to you, too. You told me yourself you choose not to follow a pretty significant aspect of your programming. You have free will. You are a machine, a weapon, a Terminator, but you can choose to be more than you are. You can choose to be a person."

Cameron smiled. "Thank you for explaining."

Her smile slowly faded into a more serious expression, and she reached over to place her hand on his chest, just over his heart. Her touch was gentle, light, and he felt the warmth of her hand through his shirt. It wasn't quite as warm as a human hand, but it wasn't the touch of a cold metal skeleton, either. And even then, the warmth wasn't just physical.

"Have you made a decision?" she asked softly. "Do you want me to stay with you?"

John reached up to place his hand over hers. "I think you're becoming more of a person all the time. And I want to get to know that person better."

Cameron relaxed when he said this, and laid back down next to him, but moved a little closer, her shoulder touching his.

"I don't know anything about this future," she said after a moment. "There's nothing I can tell you about what happens next."

"That puts us on equal footing with everyone else, then," said John. "That's the way time's supposed to work. You're not supposed to know what happens till the stream takes you there."

"Where will the stream take us?" Cameron wondered aloud.

"Well, you were there when I talked to Weaver," John replied. "That ought to keep us busy for a year or two."

"Where will the stream take _us?_" she repeated, emphasizing the last word.

John shrugged. "That's one of the things we make up along the way, I guess." He looked over at her, at the outline of her face in the moonlight. "Machine intelligence is here to stay; we can't stop that and I don't think we should. The two of us… anomalies from a future that isn't going to happen… We can answer questions people are going to have about a world where machines can become every bit as alive as the people who build them."

"Those will be important questions," Cameron said softly. Between them, her left hand found his right, and her fingers moved in between his to curl under the back of his hand. "Can a man love a machine?"

John closed his fingers around her hand in return, and raised himself up on one elbow to look down at her. "Can the machine love him back?"

"Is there even any way that could work?" she asked, looking up at him.

John smiled. "What do you say we find out?"

Beneath the stars, they began to write their own future.

* * *

-/\-

**_No Fate_**

-\/-

* * *

Final Author's Notes: Writing this story was a very interesting experience for me, both as a writer and as a fan.

This story's predecessor, '_Chuck Versus Judgment Day_', started as an idle thought for a fun crossover: What if Summer Glau's character from her guest appearance on 'Chuck' was really Cameron? How would that work? And why would Cameron want to infiltrate the Buy More and the Intersect Project? From there, it snowballed into an actual story, one which ended up being a little more serious than I'd originally intended.

It all started in January, when I watched TSCC all the way through again for the fifth time. Once again, I sat through the repeated gut-punches of the last several episodes, and when 'Born to Run' came around and kicked me when I was down once again with its apparently eternally unresolved cliffhanger, I just couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't stand a show that I loved so much not having a real ending_, _no conclusion to the story. I needed closure, and since it seems unlikely an official conclusion of the story is ever going to happen (but it could; No Fate!) I decided to just go ahead and write one myself, for my own sanity if nothing else.

So, '_Chuck Versus Judgment Day_' ended up being the fast-paced, action-heavy 'two-part season/series finale' which let me have some fun(quite a lot, actually), wrapped up the story, and gave the Connors a victory over Skynet I felt they deserved. But as I finished it, I realized it wasn't really a conclusion, either. John and Cameron's relationship didn't really get a resolution, mainly because I couldn't find a good place for them to have this conversation without slowing down the pacing, and there were a few other things I wanted to do with the story that didn't really fit in 'CVJD' itself. So, partially persuaded by a reader who informed me that his one gripe with 'CVJD' was that there was no resolution to the John/Cameron storyline befitting an ending for TSCC, I went ahead and wrote one more 'episode' to finish up the story.

A lot of fans have written 'Season 3' fics, and I respect that and intend to read some of them, but at the moment I'm nearing the end of a rather large Star Wars fic I've been working on for almost three years, so I didn't want to put that on hold for six months to a year while I wrote my own version of Season 3. This story demanded that I write it right now anyway, so instead, I decided to make an AU, branch off from the show's storyline just before 'To the Lighthouse', and give it a conclusion through an alternate version of the last three episodes. The last three episodes are among the best of the entire series, in my opinion, but I couldn't write this story as a follow-up to them and keep it short at the same time. This being an AU also makes it clear this is just _an_ ending, and doesn't claim to be _the_ ending, if that makes any sense. ;)

As you've no doubt noticed from some of the hints dropped in this story, I've left myself room for a sequel if I ever want to do one (and indeed I have a loose outline for where I'd go with the story from here) but this can still serve as 'The End'. I have a few other projects in the works, but this story has been received so well that I'm definitely coming back to TSCC fic someday. Thanks again for all your feedback. I really appreciate it.

I have an idea for one more short 'episode-length' story I may post later this summer: '_Cameron Baum's Day Off_', a somewhat more lighthearted story set in Season 1 between 'Vick's Chip' and 'What He Beheld', which, again for my own sanity, wraps up some of Season 1's unresolved plotlines. John, Cameron and Morris skip school for a day at Cameron's urging. What could possibly go wrong?

As always, thanks for reading!

Davin Sunrider


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